"Dearest Godmother and Lloyd:—Everybody is in the cabin writing letters to send back by the pilot-boat, so here is a little note to tell you that we are starting off in fine style. The band is playing, the sun is shining, and the harbour is smooth as glass. I have been looking over the deck-railing, and the deep green water, rocking the little boats out in the harbour, makes me think of the White Seal's lullaby that godmother sang to us when we had the measles."'The storm shall not wake thee,Nor shark overtake thee,Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.'"I know that I shall think of that many times during the passage, and am sure we are going to enjoy every minute of it. Eugenia sends lots of love to you both. She is writing to Joyce. The next time we write it will be from Southampton. If you could only be with us I should be perfectly happy. Good-bye, till you hear from me from the other side."Lovingly,Betty."
"Dearest Godmother and Lloyd:—Everybody is in the cabin writing letters to send back by the pilot-boat, so here is a little note to tell you that we are starting off in fine style. The band is playing, the sun is shining, and the harbour is smooth as glass. I have been looking over the deck-railing, and the deep green water, rocking the little boats out in the harbour, makes me think of the White Seal's lullaby that godmother sang to us when we had the measles.
"'The storm shall not wake thee,Nor shark overtake thee,Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.'
"I know that I shall think of that many times during the passage, and am sure we are going to enjoy every minute of it. Eugenia sends lots of love to you both. She is writing to Joyce. The next time we write it will be from Southampton. If you could only be with us I should be perfectly happy. Good-bye, till you hear from me from the other side.
"Lovingly,Betty."
There was a hasty postscript scribbled across the end. "Be sure you let me know the minute you hear anything from Dot. If anybody finds her, Cousin Carl says cable the word 'found,' and we will know what you mean."
For a few minutes after the reading of the letter, the Little Colonel stood by the window, looking out without a word. Then she began:
"I wish I'd nevah had a house party. I wish I'd nevah known Joyce or Eugenia or Betty. I wishI'd nevah laid eyes on any of them, or been to the Cuckoo's Nest, or—ornothin'!"
"What is the trouble now, Lloyd?" asked her mother, wonderingly.
"Then I wouldn't be so lonesome now that everything is ovah. I despise that 'left behind' feelin' moah than anything I know. It makes me somisah'ble!They've all gone away and left me now, and I'll nevah be as happy again as I've been this summah. I'm suah of it!"
"'Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone.All her lovely companions are faded and gone,'"
sang Mrs. Sherman, gaily, as she came and put an arm around Lloyd's drooping shoulders. "Every summer brings its own roses, little daughter. When the old friends go, look around for new ones, and you'll always find them."
"I don't want any new ones," exclaimed the Little Colonel, gloomily. "There'll nevah be anybody that I'll take the same interest in that I do in Betty and Joyce and Eugenia."
Yet even as she spoke, there were coming toward her life, nearer and nearer as the days went by, other friends, who were to have a large part in making its happiness, and who were to fill it with new interests and new pleasures.
HOME-LESSONS AND JACK-O'-LANTERNS.
Itwas hard for the Little Colonel to start back to school after her long holiday. Hard, in the first place, because she was a month behind her classes, and had extra home-lessons to learn. Hard, in the second place, because a more gorgeous October had never been known in the Valley, and all out-doors called to her to come and play. In the lanes the sumach flamed crimson, and in the avenues the maples turned gold. In the woods, where the nuts were dropping all day long, the dogwood-trees hung out their coral berries, and every beech and sweet gum put on a glory of its own.
"Oh, mothah, I can't study," Lloyd declared one afternoon. "I don't care whethah the Amazon Rivah rises in South America or the South Pole; an' I think those old Mexicans were horrid to give their volcanoes an' things such terrible long names. They ought to have thought about the trouble they were makin' for all the poah children in the worldwho would have to learn to spell them. I nevah can learn Popocatepetl. Why didn't they call it something easy, like—like Crosspatch!" she added, closing her book with a bang. "That's the way it makes me feel, anyhow. It is going to take all afternoon to get this one lesson."
Girl seated on stairs holding ears with a book in her lap"THE PLAN WORKED LIKE A CHARM."
"Not if you put your mind on it. Your lips have been saying it over and over, but your thoughts seem to be miles away."
"But everything interrupts me," complained Lloyd. "The bumble-bees an' the woodpeckahs an' the jay-birds are all a-callin'. I'm goin' in the house an' sit on the stair steps an' put my fingahs in my yeahs. Maybe I can study bettah that way."
The plan worked like a charm. In less than ten minutes she was back again, glibly reciting her geography lesson. After that all her home-lessons were learned on the stairs, where no out-door sights and sounds could arrest her attention.
She was in the midst of her lessons one afternoon, her book open on her knees, and her hands over her ears, when she felt, rather than heard, the jar of a heavy chair drawn across the porch. Dropping her hands from her ears, she heard her mother say: "Take this rocker, Allison. I'm so glad you havecome. I have been wishing that you would all afternoon."
"Oh, it is Miss Allison MacIntyre!" thought Lloyd. "I wish I didn't have to study while she is heah. I love to listen to her talk."
Thinking to get through as soon as possible, she turned her attention resolutely to her book, but, after a few moments, she could not resist stopping to lift her head and listen, just to find out what subject they were discussing. Although Miss Allison was her mother's friend, Lloyd claimed her as her own especial property. But all children did that. Such was the charming interest with which she entered into comradeship with every boy and girl in the Valley, that they counted her one of themselves. A party without Miss Allison was not to be thought of, and a picnic was sure to be a failure unless she was one of the number.
The two little knights, Keith and Malcolm, were privileged, by reason of family ties, to call her auntie, but there were many like Lloyd who put her on a pedestal in their affections, and claimed a kinship almost as dear. Presently Lloyd caught a word that made her prick up her ears, and she leaned forward, listening eagerly.
"Sister Mary's children are coming out next Saturday.I was lying awake last night, wondering what I could do to entertain them, when it popped into my head that Saturday will be the last day of October, and of course they'll want to celebrate Hallowe'en."
"Sister Mary's children," repeated Lloyd to herself, with a puzzled expression, that suddenly turned to one of joyful recollection. "Oh, she means the little Waltons! I wondah how long they've been back in America?"
Her geography slipped unnoticed to the floor, as she sat thinking of her old playmates, whom she had not seen since their departure for the Philippines, and wondering if they had changed much in their long absence. There were four of them, Ranald (she remembered that he must be fourteen now, counting by his cousin Malcolm's age) and his three younger sisters, Allison, Kitty, and Elise. Some of the happiest days that Lloyd could remember had been the ones spent with them in the big tent pitched on the MacIntyre lawn; for no matter how far west was the army post at which their father happened to be stationed, they had been brought back every summer to visit their grandmother in the old Kentucky home.
Lloyd had not seen them since their father had been made a general, and they had gone away onthe transport to the strange new life in the Philippines. Although many interesting letters were sent back to the Valley, in which the whole neighbourhood was interested, it happened that Lloyd had never heard any of them read. Her old playmates seemed to have dropped completely out of her life, until one sad day when the country hung its flags at half-mast, and the black head-lines in every newspaper in the land announced the loss of a nation's hero.
Lloyd remembered how strange it seemed to read the account, and know it was Ranald's father who was meant. She thought of them often in the weeks that followed, for Papa Jack could not pick up a newspaper without reading some touching tribute to the brave general's memory, some beautiful eulogy on his heroic life, but somehow the strange experiences her little playmates were passing through seemed to set them apart from other children in Lloyd's imagination, and she thought of them as people in a book, instead of children she had romped with through many a long summer day.
As she listened to the voice on the porch she found that Miss Allison was talking about her sister, and telling some of the interesting things that had happened to the children in Manila. It was morethan the Little Colonel could endure, to sit in the house and hear only snatches of conversation.
"Oh, mothah,pleaselet me come out and listen," she begged. "I'll study to-night instead, if you will. I'll learn two sets of lessons if you'll let me put it off just this once." There was a laughing consent given, and the next moment Lloyd was seated on a low stool at Miss Allison's feet, looking up into her face with an expectant smile, ready for every word that might fall from her lips.
"I was telling your mother about Ranald," began Miss Allison. "She asked me how it came about that such a little fellow was made captain in the army."
"Oh, was he areallycaptain?" cried Lloyd, in surprise. "I thought it was just a nickname like mine that they gave him, because his father was a general."
"No, he was really a captain, the youngest in the army of the United States Volunteers, for he received his appointment and his shoulder-straps a few weeks before his twelfth birthday. He'll never forget that Fourth of July if he lives to be a hundred; for those shoulder-straps meant more to him than all the noise and sky-rockets and powder-burns of all the boys in America put together. You seehe had been under fire at the battle of San Pedro Macati. He had gone out with his father, a short time after they landed in Manila, and the general in command invited them out on the firing line. Before they realised their peril, they suddenly found themselves under a sharp fire from the enemy. One of the staff said afterward that he had never seen greater coolness in the face of as great danger, and all the officers praised his self-possession. For a little while the bullets whizzed around him thick and fast. One hit the ground between his feet. Another grazed his hat, but all he said as one hummed by was, 'Oh, papa, did you see that? It looked like a hop-toad.'
"It was a terrible sight for a child's eyes, for he saw war in all its horrors, and his mother did not want him to take the risks of any more battle-fields, but he was a true soldier's son, and insisted on following his father wherever it was possible for him to go. At the battle of Zapote River he was in no danger, for he had been put in a church tower overlooking the field. But that was a terrible ordeal, for all day long he stood by the window, expecting any minute to see his father fall. All day long he looked for him, towering above his men, and whenever he lost sight of him for awhile, heleaned out to watch the litters the men were carrying into the church below where they brought the dead and dying. It was always with the sickening dread that the still figure on some one of them might be that of his beloved father. Sister Mary sent me a copy of the official announcement, that gave him the rank of captain. It mentions his coolness under fire. You may imagine I am quite proud of that little document, for I always think of Ranald as he was when I had him with me most, a sensitive little fellow with golden curls and big brown eyes, as silent and reserved as his father. You see I know that his courage has no element of daring recklessness. So many things he did showed that, even when he was a baby. It is just quiet grit that takes him through the things that hardier boys might court. That, and his strong will.
"At first he was appointed aide-de-camp on his father's staff, and went with him on all his expeditions, and rode on a dear little Filipino pony. The natives called him the Pickaninny Captain. He was under fire again at the capture of Calamba, and soon after he was made an aide on Gen. Fred. Grant's staff. Once while under him he was ordered back in charge of some insurgents' guns that had fallen into the hands of the Americans, to be turned in atheadquarters. So you see he was a 'really' captain as you called him."
"Oh, tell some more, Miss Allison," begged Lloyd, thinking that the subject might be dropped, when Miss Allison paused for a moment.
"Well, I hardly know what else to tell. His room is full of relics and trophies he brought home with him,—shells and bullets and bolos—great savage knives with zigzag two-edged blades—flags, curios,—all sorts of things that he picked up or that the officers gave him. His mother can tell you volumes of interesting experiences he has had, but he is as shy and modest as ever about his own affairs, and maybe he'll never speak of them. He'll tell you possibly of the deer which the English consul gave him, and the pet monkey that followed him everywhere, even when it had to swim out through a rice swamp after him; maybe he'll mention the Filipino pony that the officers gave him when he came back to America, but he rarely speaks of those graver experiences, those scenes of battle and bloodshed."
"It doesn't seem possible that it is Ranald who has seen and done all those things," said the Little Colonel, thoughtfully. "When you play with people and fuss with them, and slap their faces when they pull your hair, or throw away their marbles whenthey break your dolls, as we did, when we were little, it seems so queah to think of them bein'heroes."
Miss Allison laughed heartily. "That's a universal trouble," she said. "We never can be heroes to our family and neighbours. Even brass buttons and shoulder-straps cannot outshine the memory of early hair-pullings."
"Tell about the girls," said Lloyd, fearing that if a pause were allowed in the conversation Miss Allison would begin talking about something less entertaining than her nephew and nieces. "Do they still love to play papah dolls and have tableaux in the barn?"
"Yes, I am sure they do. They didn't have as exciting a time as Ranald, for of course they stayed at home with their mother in the palace at Manila. But it was interesting. It had queer windows of little sliding squares of mother-of-pearl, that were shut only when it rained. They could peep through and see the coolies in their capes and skirts of cocoa-nut fibre, and the big hats, like inverted baskets, that made them look as if they had stepped out of Robinson Crusoe's story.
"On one side of the palace was the Pasig River, where the natives go by in their long skiffs. On the other side were the sights of the streets. Sometimes it was only an old peanut vendor whom theywatched, or a man with fruit or boiled eggs or shrimps or dulce. Sometimes it was the seller of parched corn, squatting beside the earthen pot of embers which he constantly fanned, as he turned the ears laid across it to roast. And sometimes the ambulances went by on their way to the hospital, reminding them that life on the island was not a happy play-day for every one. I am sure that the Lady of Shalott never saw more entertaining pictures in her magic mirror than the panorama that daily passed those windows of mother-of-pearl.
"Time never dragged there, you may be sure. Sometimes they were invited to spend an afternoon on the English war-ship, and the young officers gave them a spread and a romp over the ship. Allison still keeps an old hat with the ship's ribbon on it for a hat-band, which a gallant little midshipman gave her to remind her of the good times they had had together on the vessel. The English consul and vice-consul frequently invited them to tiffin or to parties, and their garden of monkeys was open to their little American neighbours at all times.
"Coming home the transport stopped in a Japanese harbour for a week. The faithful old Japanese servants, Fuzzi and her husband, who had lived with them in California and followed them to the Philippines,were with them on the transport. This place where they stopped happened to be their native town, so they took the children on land every day and gave them a glimpse behind the scenes of Japanese life, which few foreigners see.
"Then Allison had a birthday, while they were homeward bound, away out in the middle of the Pacific, and the ship's cook surprised her by making her a magnificent birthday cake with her name on it in icing. Oh, they've had all sorts of unusual experiences, and many, no doubt, that I have never heard of, although they have been back in America a year. But now that they have taken a house in town I expect to have them with me a great deal. And that brings me to the matter I came up to see you both about. They are coming out Saturday, and I want you to help me give them a Hallowe'en party."
"Another holiday!" exclaimed Lloyd, clapping her hands. "I had forgotten that there was anything to celebrate between Fourth of July and Thanksgiving. I never went to a Hallowe'en party in my life, but it sounds as if it would be lots of fun."
"Do you remember the old house at Hartwell Hollow that has been vacant so long?" asked MissAllison. "The coloured people say it is haunted. Of course we do not believe such foolish things, or any of the foolishness of Hallowe'en in fact, but as long as we're going to resurrect the old superstitions, it is appropriate to have a haunted house for the purpose. The landlord says that it is that report which keeps it vacant. I saw him this morning, and got his permission to use it for the party. I think we can make an ideal spot of it. I'll have it swept and cleaned, and on Saturday afternoon I want you both to come and help me decorate it."
"Of course the only lights must be Jack-o'-lanterns," said Mrs. Sherman, entering into the plan as heartily as if she had been Lloyd's age. "The corn-field is full of pumpkins. Walker can make lanterns all day if necessary. It will take nearly a hundred, will it not, Allison?"
"I think so, although we will light only the down-stairs rooms, but there ought to be some large ones on the porches. We'll try all the old charms that we tried when we were children; bake a fate cake, melt lead, bob for apples, and observe every silly old custom that we can think of. The house is unfurnished except for an old stove in the kitchen, but I can easily send over enough tables and chairs."
Miss Allison went away soon, after they had finishedall their plans, and Lloyd stood looking after her as long as she was in sight.
"How can I wait until Saturday?" she asked, with a wriggle of impatience. "I'm so glad she asked us to help. Getting ready for things is nearly as much fun as the things themselves. But Hallowe'en pahties and home-lessons don't mix very well. I'll be thinking about that now, instead of my lessons. Oh, mothah, it seems to me I nevah can learn to spell that old volcano. I knew how last week, but I missed it again yestahday when we had review in spelling."
"I have thought of a way to mix Hallowe'en and home-lessons in such a way that you will never forget one word, at least," said her mother. "Tell Walker to bring the largest, roundest pumpkin that he can find in the field, and put it on the bench by the spring-house. Call me when he is ready."
Wondering what pumpkins and volcanoes had to do with each other, but charmed with the novelty of her mother's way of teaching spelling, Lloyd went skipping down the path to give the order to Walker. It was only a little while until she was back again.
"It is the biggest pumpkin I evah saw," shereported. "It was too big fo' Walkah to carry. He had to bring it up on a wheelbarrow."
Taking a carving-knife as she passed through the kitchen, Mrs. Sherman caught up her dainty skirts and followed Lloyd down the path to the spring-house. It was late in the afternoon and a touch of frost was in the air. The yellow maple leaves were floating softly down from the branches above the path, and wherever the sun touched them on the ground lay a carpet of shining gold.
"See, mothah, isn't it a whoppah?" cried Lloyd, trying to put her arms around the mammoth pumpkin on the bench. "It is a beauty," answered Mrs. Sherman, as she began deftly outlining a face on one side of it, with the sharp carving-knife. First she drew two large circles in the yellow skin where the eyes were to be cut, a triangle for the nose, and a grinning crescent just below for the mouth.
"Now," she said, passing the knife to Lloyd, "carve the letters P-O in each circle. It does not matter if they are crooked. They are to be cut out with the circle afterwhile. Now in the triangle put the word CAT and the letter E after it, and in the crescent the word PET and the letter L. Now what does the face say to you?"
"The eyes say popo, the nose cat-e and themouth pet-l," answered Lloyd, laughing at the comical face outlined on the pumpkin.
"Shut your eyes and spell Popocatepetl," said Mrs. Sherman.
"Why, it is just as easy," cried Lloyd, as she rattled it off. "I can see each syllable grinning at me, one aftah the othah. I am suah I'll nevah fo'get it now. I like your way of teaching, bettah than anybody's."
Presently, as she scooped out the seeds while her mother made a mandarin hat of the slice she had cut off below the stem, she said, "Old Popocatepetl will make the biggest Jack-o'-lantern of them all. It's a good name for him, too, because he'll be all smoke and fiah inside aftah the candles are lighted. We can put him ovah the front doah. I wondah what Allison and Kitty and Elise will think of him. Oh, mothah, do you remembah the time that Kitty set all the clocks and watches in the house back a whole hour and made everybody late fo' church? And the time she folded a grasshoppah up in everybody's napkin, the night the ministah was invited to Mrs. MacIntyre's to dinnah, and what a mighty hoppin' there was as soon as the napkins were unfolded?"
Once started on Kitty's pranks, Lloyd went onwith a chapter of don't you remember this and don't you remember that, until the sun went down behind the western hills and old Popocatepetl grinned in ugly completeness even to the last tooth in his wide-spread jaw.
A HALLOWE'EN PARTY.
Nothingworse than rats and spiders haunted the old house of Hartwell Hollow, but set far back from the road in a tangle of vines and cedars, it looked lonely and neglected enough to give rise to almost any report. The long unused road, winding among the rockeries from gate to house, was hidden by a rank growth of grass and mullein. From one of the trees beside it an aged grape-vine swung down its long snaky limbs, as if a bunch of giant serpents had been caught up in a writhing mass and left to dangle from tree-top to earth. Cobwebs veiled the windows, and dead leaves had drifted across the porches until they layknee-deepin some of the corners.
As Miss Allison paused in front of the doorstep with the keys, a snake glided across her path and disappeared in one of the tangled rockeries. Both the coloured women who were with her jumped back, and one screamed.
"It won't hurt you, Sylvia," said Miss Allison,laughingly. "An old poet who owned this place when I was a child made pets of all the snakes, and even brought some up from the woods as he did the wild flowers. That is a perfectly harmless kind."
"Maybe so, honey," said old Sylvia, with a wag of her turbaned head, "but I 'spise 'em all, I sho'ly do. It's a bad sign to meet up wid one right on de do'step. If it wasn't fo' you, Miss Allison, I wouldn't put foot in such a house. An' I tell you p'intedly, what I says is gospel truth, if I ketch sound of a han't, so much as even a rustlin' on de flo', ole Sylvia gwine out'n a windah fo' you kin sayscat!Don't ketch dis ole niggah foolin' roun' long whar ghos'es is. Pete's got to go in first an' open de house."
But not even the rats interrupted Sylvia in her sweeping and garnishing, and by four o'clock all the rooms which were to be used were as clean as three of Mrs. MacIntyre's best trained servants could make them.
"Even ole Miss would call that clean," said Sylvia, looking around on the white floors and shining window-panes with a satisfied air.
Mrs. Sherman had driven down some time before, with a carriage-load of Jack-o'-lanterns, and was now arranging them in rows on all the old-fashioned black mantels. She looked around as Sylvia spoke.
"It would have been spookier to have left the dust and cobwebs," she said, "but this is certainly nicer and more cheerful."
Fires were blazing on every hearth, in parlour, dining-room, and hall, to dissipate the dampness of the long unused rooms. A kettle was singing on the kitchen stove, and tables and chairs had been brought over and arranged in the empty rooms. All that the woods could contribute in the way of crimson berries, trailing vines, and late autumn leaves, had been brought in to brighten the bare walls and festoon the uncurtained windows. The chestnuts, the apples, the tubs of water, the lead, and everything else necessary for the working of the charms was in readiness; the refreshments were in the pantry, and on the kitchen table Lloyd was arranging the ingredients for the fate cake.
"There couldn't be a bettah place for a Hallowe'en pahty," she said, looking around the rooms when all was done. "No mattah how much we romp and play, there's nothing that can be hurt. Won't it look shivery when all the Jack-o'-lanterns are lighted? Just as if some old ogah of a Bluebeard lived heah, who kept the heads of all his wives and neighbours sittin' around on all the mantels an' shelves."
It was in the ruddy glow of the last bright Octobersunset that they drove away from the house to go home to dinner. Even then the grounds looked desolate and forlorn; but it was doubly gruesome when they came back at night. The Little Colonel and her mother were first to arrive. They had offered to come early and light the lanterns, as Miss Allison was expecting all her nieces and nephews on the seven o'clock train, and wanted to go down to meet them.
The wind was blowing in fitful gusts, rustling the dead leaves and swaying the snaky branches of the grape-vine until they seemed startlingly alive. Now and then the moon looked out like a pale bleared eye.
"It is a real Tam O'Shanter night," said Miss Allison, as she led the way up the winding walk to the front door. "I can easily imagine witches flying over my head. Can't you?" she asked, turning to the little group surrounding her. There were eight children. For not only Ranald and his sisters had come with Malcolm and Keith, but Rob Moore and his cousin Anna had been invited to come out from town to try their fortunes at Hartwell Hollow, and spend the night in the Valley where they always passed their happy summers.
"Oh, auntie! What's that?" cried little Elise,holding tightly to Miss Allison's hand, as she caught sight of Lloyd's old Popocatepetl, grinning a welcome by the front door. He looked like a mammoth dragon, spouting fire from nose, eyes and mouth.
Elise clung a little closer to Miss Allison's side as they drew nearer. "What awful teeth it's got, hasn't it?"
"Nothing but grains of corn, dear. Lloyd stuck them in. You haven't forgotten the Little Colonel, have you? She is inside the house now, waiting to see you." Then Miss Allison turned to the others. "Step high, children, every one of you, when you come to this broomstick lying across the door-sill. Be sure to step over it, or some witch might slip in with you. It is the only way to keep them out on Hallowe'en. Step high, Elise! Here we go!"
"That's one of the nice things about auntie," Kitty confided to Anna Moore as they followed. "She acts as if she really believes those old charms, and that makes them seem so real that we enjoy them so much more."
The Little Colonel, waiting in the hall for the guests to arrive, had been feeling a little shy about renewing her acquaintance with Ranald and his sisters. It seemed to her that they must have seen so much and learned so much in their triparound the world, that they would not care to talk about ordinary matters. But when they all came tumbling in over the broomstick, they seemed to tumble at the same time from the pedestals where her imagination had placed them, back into the old familiar footing just where they had been before they went away.
Lloyd had thought about Ranald many times since Miss Allison's account of him had made him a hero in her eyes. She could not think of him in any way but as dressed in a uniform, riding along under fluttering flags to the sound of martial music. So when Miss Allison called, "Here is the captain, Little Colonel," her face flushed as if she were about to meet some distinguished stranger. But it was the same quiet Ranald who greeted her, much taller than when he went away, but dressed just like the other boys, and not even bronzed by his long marches under the tropical sun. The year that had passed since his return had blotted out all trace of his soldier life in his appearance, except, perhaps, the military erectness with which he held himself.
Kitty, after catching Lloyd by the shoulders for an impulsive hug and kiss, started at once to examine the haunted house.
"There'll be mischief brewing in a little bit, I'll promise you," said Miss Allison, as Kitty's head with its short black hair dodged past her, and there was a flash of a red dress up the stairway. "She is looking for the 'ghos'es' that Sylvia told her were up there."
Elise clung to Allison's hand, for the little sister wanted the protection of the big one, in those ghostly-looking rooms, lighted only by the fires and the yellow gleam of those rows of weird, uncanny Jack-o'-lantern faces. Like Kitty, both Allison and Elise had big dark eyes that might have been the pride of a Spanish señorita, they were so large and lustrous. Kitty's curls had been cut, but theirs hung thick and long on their shoulders. The sight of them moved Rob to a compliment.
"You and Anna Moore make me think of night and morning," he said, looking from Anna's golden hair to Allison's dusky curls. "One is so light and one is so black. You ought to go around together all the time. You look fine together."
"Rob is growing up," laughed Anne. "Two years ago he wouldn't have thought about making pretty speeches about our hair; he'd just have pulled it."
"Here comes a whole crowd of people," exclaimedAllison, as the door opened again. "I wonder how many of the girls I'll know. Oh, there's Corinne and Katie and Margery and Julia Forrest. Why, nobody seems to have changed a bit. Come on, Lloyd, let's go and speak to them."
"I'm glad that everybody is coming early," said Lloyd, "so that we can begin the fate cake."
That was the first performance. When the guests had all arrived, they were taken into the kitchen. Under the ban of silence (for the speaking of a word would have broken the charm) they stood around the table, giggling as the cake was concocted, out of a cup of salt, a cup of flour, and enough water to make a thick batter. A ring, a thimble, a dime, and a button were dropped into it, and each guest gave the mixture a solemn stir before the pan was put into the oven, and left in charge of old Mom Beck.
By that time the two tubs of water had been carried into the hall. Several dozen apples were set afloat in them, with a folded strip of paper pinned to each bearing a hidden name. By the time these had been lifted out by their stems in the teeth of the laughing contestants, the lead was melted ready to use.
They tried their fate with that next, pouring a little out into a plate of water, to see into whatshapes the drops would instantly harden. Strangely enough, Ranald's took the shape of a sword. Malcolm's was a lion and Keith's a ship, the Little Colonel's a star and Rob's a spur. Some could have been called almost anything, like the one little Elise found in her plate. She could not decide whether to call it a sugar-bowl or a chicken. But Miss Allison explained them all, giving some funny meaning to each, and setting them all to laughing with the queer fortunes she declared these lead drops predicted.
They tried all the old customs they had ever heard of. They popped chestnuts on a shovel, they counted apple-seeds, they threw the parings over their heads to see what initials they would form in falling. They blindfolded each other and groped across the room to the table, on which stood three saucers, one filled with ashes, one with water, and one standing empty, to see whether life, death, or single blessedness awaited them in the coming year.
In the midst of these games Kitty beckoned the boys aside and led them out on the porch. "What do you think?" she whispered. "After all the trouble auntie has taken to plan different entertainments, Cora Ferris isn't satisfied. I heard her talking to some of the older girls. She told Eliza Hughes that she expected some excitement when she came, andthat she was dying to go down cellar backward with a looking-glass in one hand and a candle in the other. You know if you do that, the person whom you're to marry will come and look over your shoulder, and you can see him in the glass.
"The girls begged her not to, and told her that she'd be frightened to death if she saw anybody, but she whispered to Eliza that she knew she wouldn't be scared, for she was sure Walter Cummins was her fate, and would have to be down in the cellar if she tried the charm, and that she wouldn't be afraid of going into a lion's den if she thought Walter would be there. And Eliza giggled and threatened to tell, and Cora got red and put her hand over Eliza's mouth, and carried on awfully silly. It made me tired. But she's bound to go down cellar after awhile, and somebody has told Walter what she said, and he's going, just for fun. Now I think it would be lots of fun to watch Walter, and keep him from going, on some excuse or another, and then one of you boys look over her shoulder."
"Rob, you're the biggest, and almost as tall as Walter. You ought to be the one to go," suggested Keith.
"Down in that spook cellar?" demanded Rob. "Not much, Keithie, my son. I might see somethingmyself, without the help of a looking-glass or candle. I am not afraid of flesh and blood, but I vow I'm not ready to have my hair turn white in a single night. I have been brought up on stories of the haunts that live in that cellar. My old black mammy used to live here, and she has made me feel as if my blood had turned to ice-water, lots of times, with her tales."
"You go, captain," said Malcolm, turning to Ranald. "You've been under fire, and oughtn't to be afraid of anything. You've got a reputation to keep up, and here is a chance for you to show the stuff you are made of."
"I am not afraid of the cellar," said the little captain, stoutly, "but I'm not going to be the one to look over her shoulder into the looking-glass. I don't want to run any risk of marrying that fat Cora Ferris."
A shout of laughter went up at his answer.
"You won't have to, goosey," said Rob. "There's nothing in those old signs."
"Well, I am not going to take any chances with her," he persisted, backing up against the wall. That settled it. They could have moved the rock foundation of the house itself easier than the captain, when he took that kind of a stand. Looking at itfrom Ranald's point of view, none of the boys were willing to go down cellar, for they could easily imagine how the others would tease them afterward. Kitty's prank would have fallen through, if she had not been quicker than a weasel at planning mischief.
"What's to hinder fixing up a dummy man, and putting him down there?" she suggested. "You boys can run home and get Uncle Harry's rubber boots, and his old slouch hat, and some pillows, and that military cape that Ginger's father left there, and she'll think it is an army officer that's she's going to marry. Won't she be fooled?"
The boys were as quick to act as Kitty was to plan. A noisy game of blind man's buff was going on inside the house, so no one missed the conspirators, although they were gone for some time.
"We just ran home a minute for something," was Keith's excuse, when he and Malcolm and Ranald came in, red-faced and breathless. Rob and Kitty were still in the cellar, putting the finishing touches to the army officer. Kitty was recklessly fastening the dummy together with big safety-pins, regardless of the holes she was making in her Uncle Harry's high rubber hunting-boots.
"Isn't he a dandy!" exclaimed Rob, putting the slouched hat on the pillow head at a fierce angle,and fastening the military cape up around the chin as far as possible. "Come on now, Kitty, let us make our escape before anybody comes."
girl walking in dark with candle and mirror in her hands"SHE BEGAN THE OLD RHYME."
Meanwhile, the boys had corralled Walter Cummins, and Cora, seeing him leave the room, thought that the proper time had come. Slipping the hand-mirror from the dressing-table in the room where they had left their wraps, she took a candle from one of the Jack-o'-lanterns on the side porch, and signalled the girls who had agreed to follow her. She was nearly sixteen, but the three girls who groped their way across the courtyard in the flickering light of her candle were much younger.
The cellar was entered from the courtyard, by an old-fashioned door, the kind best adapted to sliding, and it took the united strength of all the girls to lift it. A rush of cold, damp air greeted them, and an earthy smell that would have checked the enthusiasm of any girl less sentimental than Cora.
"I am frightened to death, girls," she confessed at the last moment, her teeth chattering. Yet she was not so frightened as she would have been had she not been sure that Walter had gone down the steps ahead of her.
"Hold the door open," she said, preparing to back slowly down. Her fluffy light hair stood outlike an aureole in the yellow candle-light, and the face reflected in the hand-mirror was pretty enough to answer every requirement of the old spell, despite the silly simper on her lips. When she was nearly at the bottom of the cellar steps she began the old rhyme:
"If in this glass his face I see,Then my true love will marry me."
But the couplet ended in a scream, so terrifying, so ear-splitting, so blood-curdling, that Katie dropped in a cold, trembling little heap on the ground, and Eliza Hughes sank down on top of Katie, weak and shivering. Cora had seen the pillow-man in the cellar. Dropping the looking-glass with a crash, but clinging desperately to the candle, she dashed up the steps shrieking at every breath. Just at the top she stepped on the front of her skirt, and fell sprawling forward. She dropped the candle then, but not before it had touched her hair and set it afire.
The soft fluffy bangs blazed up like tow, and too terrified to move, Eliza Hughes still sat on top of Katie, screaming louder than Cora had done. The sight brought Katie to her senses, however, and scrambling up from under Eliza, she flew at Cora and began beating out the fire with her bare hands. Cora, who had not discovered that her hair wasablaze, did not know what to make of such strange treatment. Her first thought was that Katie had gone crazy with fright, and that was why she had flown at her and begun to beat her on the head. It was all over in an instant, and the fire put out so quickly that only Cora's bangs were scorched, and Katie's fingers but slightly burned.
But the screams had reached through the uproar of blind man's buff, and the whole party poured out into the courtyard to see what had happened. There was great excitement for a little while, and Kitty, enjoying the confusion she had stirred up, giggled as she listened to Cora's startling description of the man that had peeped over her shoulder. "He didn't look like any one I'd ever seen before," she declared. "He was tall and handsome and dressed like a soldier."
"Oh, surely not, Cora," answered Miss Allison, who saw that some of the little girls gathered around her were badly frightened. "That couldn't be, you know. The cellar is quite empty. Give me the candle, and I'll go down and show you."
"Oh, no, please, auntie, don't go down," cried Kitty, seeing that the time had come to confess. "It is just a Hallowe'en joke. We didn't suppose that Cora would be scared. We just wanted totease her because she seemed so sure that she would find Walter down there. Go and bring him up, boys."
Ranald and Rob started down the stairs, with Keith carrying a candle, and Malcolm calling for Walter to come on and help carry out his rival. The four boys, picking up the dummy as if it had been a real man, carried it up the steps and laid it carefully on the ground. So comical did it look with its pudgy pillow face, that everybody laughed except Cora. She was furiously angry, and not all Kitty's penitent speeches or the boys' polite apologies could appease her. If it had not been for Miss Allison she would have flounced home in high displeasure. But she as usual poured oil on the troubled waters, and talked in such a tactful way of her harum-scarum niece's many pranks, that there was no resisting such an appeal. She allowed herself to be led back to the house, but she would not join in any of the games.
"Mom Beck says I'll have bad luck for seven years because I broke that looking-glass," she said, mournfully.
"Oh, nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Allison. "Don't give it another thought, dear, it is only an old negro superstition."
She might have added that it was to herself and brother the ill luck had come, since it was her silver mirror that was broken, and Harry's rubber boots that would be henceforth useless for wading because of the holes thoughtless Kitty had made in them with safety-pins, when she fastened them to the pillows.
Refreshments were served soon after they went back to the house. Not the cakes and ices that usually attended parties in the Valley, but things suggestive of Hallowe'en. Pop-corn, nuts, and apples, doughnuts and molasses candy. Then the fate cake was cut, and everybody took a slice to carry home to dream on.
"Eat it the last thing before you retire," said Miss Allison. "Then walk to bed backwards without taking a drink of water or speaking another word to-night. It is so salty that it is likely you will dream of being thirsty, and of somebody bringing you water. They say if you dream of its being brought in a golden goblet you will marry into wealth. If in a tin cup poverty will be your lot. The kind of vessel you see in your dream will decide your fate. Ah, Walter got the button in his slice. That means he will be an old bachelor and sew his own buttons on all his life."
Anna Moore got the dime, and Eliza Hughes the ring, which foretold that she would be the first one in the company to have a wedding. The thimble fell to no one, as it slipped out between two slices in the cutting. "That means none of us will be old maids," said little Elise. Miss Allison slipped it on Kitty's finger. "To mend your mischievous ways with," she said, and everybody who had enjoyed the pillow-man laughed.
The moon was hiding behind a cloud when at last the merry party said good-night, so Miss Allison provided each little group with a Jack-o'-lantern to light them on their homeward way. As the grotesque yellow heads with their grinning fire-faces went bobbing down the lonely road, it was well for Tam O'Shanter that he need not pass that way. All the witches of Allway Kirk could not have made such a weird procession. Well, too, for old Ichabod Crane that he need not ride that night through the shadowy Valley. One pumpkin, in the hands of the headless rider, had been enough to banish him from Sleepy Hollow for ever. What would have happened no one can tell, could he have met the long procession of bodiless heads that straggled through the gate that Hallowe'en, from the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow.